A Lesson In Lethargy
by Rebecca Pierce
Summary: And she should know better.


**A/N:** This one has been sitting on my laptop for nigh on forever. Warming up to try and tackle some of my unfinished stuff. I'd say enjoy, but it's rather angsty.

* * *

She is selfish and kind.

She knows this because it's an integral part of her, something that gets shouted at her face constantly by students and parents and basically everyone now that she thinks about it.

So this should be easy.

It should be simple for her to hate him—to charge forward into tomorrow knowing that he chose to keep a promise instead of their future. It should make the days easy, melting them into the faces of children, wide eyed and knowing, of empty hallways, of a bed that won't feel too big. Step by step it should burn until Clara Oswald is no more and she can become what he chose to be—nothing.

Nothing and everything.

She is selfish but she knows this.

And at first maybe she does hate him.

One foot forward, and she can get out of bed. Two, and she can eat more than just a nibble, can maybe taste the bitterness of the tea—that it scalds and hurts means that maybe, just maybe, she's a little more alive than she thought as red spreads from the tip of her pen mercilessly (honestly Ashley, love, you can do better than this on your next exam if you put the phone down for five minutes). Three steps and suddenly the door is open and the sun is spilling in and really, she'll be alright. She can do this, she tells herself, the lies come simply enough of late and that pang of guilt is nothing, just like him.

 _Them,_ she corrects herself. Just like _them_.

Four steps and the school looms above her.

She's counting in her head and it's bloody ridiculous but when the Doctor comes back she won't have to anymore—will get lost, drunk, chasing after the high of her feet hitting cement or dirt or metal—of breaths that are never enough and the need to drown in helping others because she is _kind._

She'll be ok.

Clara Oswald is going to make it out of this.

Six. Six steps and she doesn't know how long it's been since she's tried calling the TARDIS. Was it four days ago? Two? Five minutes ago? It blurs together and she grabs the remote because those are not tears in her eyes and her hand isn't trembling as she angrily mashes down on the buttons because there's _got_ to be something on at this hour really, it can't just be all these _stupid_ replays and she can do this, really she can, it's not a whimper that escapes her, not a sob, and she's not a collapsed heap on the floor and that's not her arm throwing the control across the room as she curls in on herself.

Five, she realizes then. She'd taken five steps.

There's a scream lodged somewhere in her throat but she's alright, really, she is—there are others out there who have lost entire families but they weren't _Danny_ and his name is _NOT_ going to drive a dagger through her again because it's not like she's remembering him hugging her one last time or apologizing for the very Danny thing he did by saving that boy.

She is selfish because she despairs when the boy comes through.

She is kind because she hugs the child regardless.

She is both because she hates that hall with such a passion now.

Somewhere down the line between the floor in the living room and the cacophony of the school Clara feels life tugging her along, a little boat carried by a stream she will never control, burbling, eddying, leaving her breathless and struggling to its every whim. Of course she'd fought from the very beginning, this leaf on the wind, tried to guide her course as best she could because the Doctor made her feel as if she could.

She's saved him enough to believe it anyways.

But this. . .

There were pieces of her missing, or so the Doctor had said, due to the choice she had made to save him. There was no arguing because she could remember going into the stream of his timeline, could recall the darkness and the suffocating _everything_ and _everyone_ , the faces that flew past in rapid motion—both his and any that had influenced him.

And it should feel odd, this, the sudden departure from her full self. She'd come back a mere puzzle piece and yet had not yielded an inch.

Six or seven—it doesn't matter. Those steps were going to lead somewhere and she'd be damned if she didn't find out, didn't drag herself out of the muck that Danny had left her in, the lies, the not quite loss that hung heavy in the air.

Eight. Days, steps, they're all bleeding into each other as she seeks not Pink but blue out of the corner of her eye now, fingers cold as she wraps a cardigan around herself and hunches back over her desk in the quickly emptying room.

She's doing fine.

Nine finds her in a nice café, elbows on the table and face passive as she awaits the man that walks calmly out of the blue box that no one seems to notice on the street.

She doesn't know what to make of the look on his face, of the way his eyes stay guarded even as he smiles at her.

"I found Gallifrey." He says.

Ten.

Ten steps has her seeing her place in the world he's created for her.

"Me and Danny, we are going to be fine." She hears herself say.

Eleven and she wraps her arms around the Doctor, trying not to break again.

"Thank you for making me feel special."

Clara waits, watches, listening to the echoing call of the TARDIS with what she hopes is a smile. Then, slowly, she squares her shoulders, turns, and lifts her foot.

Twelve steps and home becomes a memory.


End file.
